Itamar Vieira Junior

Interesting look at an interior Bahia, Brazil, tenant farming community in modern times. The descendants of slaves, the tenants are unpaid for their farm labor and also have to return a percent of anything they grow or harvest on their own. They have their own community, with their own religious leaders and traditions and foodways.

Through the book we learn how some of the characters came to be here, and how an action decades earlier can affect lives today in ways no one even considered.

There is also political action for pay for tenants, for them to be allowed land for their own use (including building permanent houses, not just mud), for actual pay.

A very interesting look at a section of Brazil, with its parallels to US history. Great story, well done.… (plus d'informations)

Obra literária obrigatória para os vestibulares UEL 2025 e UFSC 2025. Um texto épico e lírico, realista e mágico que revela, para além de sua trama, um poderoso elemento de insubordinação social. Vencedor do prêmio Leya 2018. Nas profundezas do sertão baiano, as irmãs Bibiana e Belonísia encontram uma velha e misteriosa faca na mala guardada sob a cama da avó. Ocorre então um acidente. E para sempre suas vidas estarão ligadas ― a ponto de uma precisar ser a voz da outra. Numa trama conduzida com maestria e com uma prosa melodiosa, o romance conta uma história de vida e morte, de combate e redenção.… (plus d'informations)

This novel, which is currently on this year's International Booker Prize shortlist and has won several awards in Brasil and Portugal, is set in the interior of the state of Bahia, several generations after the freedom of slaves from Africa in 1888. The former slaves are generally "employed" as tenant farmers, who are allowed to build flimsy mud shacks on the properties of the plantation owners, but are not allowed to own property or build sturdier brick homes. They harvest their own plots, but much of the best harvest is taken from them by the owners and their White overseers, as they deem that the harvest belongs to them, and the farmers are forced to purchase goods from the owners at exorbitant prices. (Hmm, does this sound familiar?)

The story opens with two young sisters, Bibiana and Belonísia, who have discovered a stunning ivory handled knife in the suitcase of their grandmother Donana, which is wrapped in an old rag. The sisters are each fascinated by the knife and want to taste it immediately. Each pulls on the knife, and in doing so suffer extreme cuts to their tongue, with a complete amputation of one of the organs and a serious injury to the other one. Because of their impoverished status and distance from major cities neither is able to receive adequate medical care. The sister with the least grevious injury is eventually able to regain speech, and the two remain close and able to communicate to each other.

The sisters form the basis of this intriguing and often tragic tale about the hard lives of these quilombolas, descendants of Afro-Brasilian slaves who, like their African American counterparts, suffered from extreme racism and violence if they dared stand up for their rights as Brasilian citizens. The women suffer the most, at the hands of unfaithful and often violent men who exert their frustrations on them. The novel is filled with great beauty, though, with magical realism sprinkled throughout, and as their conditions improve, their hopes for better lives do as well.

I greatly enjoyed Crooked Plow, which so far is my favorite of the three books I’ve read from this year’s International Booker Prize shortlist. The author, Itamar Vieira Junior, is of Afro-Brasilian descent with a doctorate in Ethnic and African Studies and has studied the quilombola communities extensively, so he is quite knowledgeable about the people he writes about.… (plus d'informations)

Beautifully written! Two sisters living in remote Brazil, the descendants of slaves injure themselves with the blade of a sharp knife belonging to their grandmother. Belonisia cuts off her tongue; her older sister, Bibiana learns to talk for her.

The struggles of these people are beyond imagining, but the strength, solidarity, love, and depth of feeling is so well portrayed. Catholicism and ancient believes brought from Africa blend together in ceremonies, healing potions, and beliefs. The father of the girls, is a healer, good to his family, beloved by the community of Agra Nigra but lives a hard life working the land

There are terrible things that happen in the book but all is told with so much respect for the people. The language, a sort of magical realism, that works so well. Loved the book.… (plus d'informations)